Fred’s Notes

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize — much less cultivate — the talents of many brilliant people. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. The universality of his message is evidenced by its rampant popularity online. A typical review: “If you have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, please stop whatever you’re doing and watch it now.”

See this amazing talk here. Thanks for the tip, João.

This is no joke. It’s real. Microsoft will open their API’s for, and I quote: “Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007; with more info coming by June on Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Office 2007 and Office SharePoint 2007.”

Also, the company says it will be launching an “Open Source Interoperability Initiative. To promote and enable more interoperability between commercial and community-based open source technologies and Microsoft products, this initiative will provide resources, facilities and events, including labs, plug fests, technical content and opportunities for ongoing cooperative development.”

Further, according to the statement: “Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. These developers will be able to use the documentation for free to develop products. Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license.”

During the conference call, Ballmer could not resist adding that commercial use patent licenses would be “readily available for the right fee”, but the promise not to sue non-commercial open source developers who tap Microsoft’s API is a marked departure from previous lawsuits and threats.

“Ignore the puffy press release, which makes it seem less substantial than it really is,” said respected industry observer, Joel Spolsky. “The bottom line is that they released a TON of useful documentation today will be very helpful for people trying to interoperate with Microsoft’s products… this should only help Microsoft in the long run. It’s a surprise that they didn’t do it sooner.”

Hell Freezes Over.

Fidel castro renunciou. E quando é que os cubanos podem renunciar ao regime de partido único?

Da próxima vez que entrevistarem o Sr. José Pinto de Sousa, falem com o Mário Crespo. É aqui assim os senhores dos laços poderiam aprender qualquer coisa, a começar pelo conceito de entrevista. Que grande frete, pá!

RMS is looking for a sweetie. Gosh.

My 23-year-old child, the Free Software Movement, occupies most of my life, leaving no room for more children, but I still have room to love a sweetheart if she doesn’t need to spend time with me every day. I spend a lot of my time traveling to give speeches, often to Europe, Asia and Latin America; it would be nice if you were free to travel with me some of the time.

Shut down NetNewsWire. Now!

Sumo de laranja com bolo de laranja.

Valentine’s Day Lunch, originally uploaded by Frederico Marques.

It was so tasty and so good looking! Yumi.

À atenção do Sr. José Sócrates.

Portugal foi ultrapassado em termos de PIB per capita por quatro dos novos Estados-membros da União Europeia – Chipre, Eslovénia, Malta e República Checa – e caiu uma posição na classificação geral, encontrando-se agora em 19.º lugar. Lisboa é a única região com uma riqueza superior à média da UE. No lado oposto da tabela está o Norte, que é a região mais pobre do País.

This update reminded me that perhaps next week I’ll go for Leopard, finally. But first, I’ll have to run a full backup of my MacBook.

As I predicted (duh), Yahoo said no to the $31 per share offer from Microsoft. If the board is just trying to get some time, move up the price or just playing the Insane Story, time will tell. So, will YHOO go up with the ongoing speculation of a higher offer? Or it will fall like Niagara?

Fiquei com muita vontade de repetir o almoço de terça-feira passada.